This glorious week of sunny weather put most of us in a good mood. People were smiling and chatty in the line at the grocery store. Neighbors walked their dogs without coats on, and the dogs wagged their tails and got petted by people passing by. Little kids and their parents stopped to smell flowers.
On the trail and in the woods each day was more colorful than the last. Maple trees were in full bloom, and their bare branches disappeared in an orgy of emerging leaves.
As Robert Frost wrote,
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Most of what was gold last Saturday was pale green by Wednesday. And by today, it was a richer, stronger green. The open sky we’d seen through skeletal winter branches is now only visible above them, and in its blue reflection in ponds, puddles and streams. The still water in ponds is dotted with bright new water lily leaves.
The open sky we’d seen through skeletal winter branches is now only visible above them.
Jill Severn | The JOLT News
Green is not the only color this week: cherry blossoms and native dogwood flowers are white, and pale to brilliant pink petals rain from the cherries’ many ornamental cousins. Even lilacs are beginning to show their namesake color.
A similar shade of lilac thrives in the wanton stands of bluebells that grow anywhere people let them — in alleys, gardens, vacant lots and neglected yards. A young, non-gardening neighbor has a backyard full of them, and this is their moment of glory. She loves them so much they bring her enough joy to last the whole year.
Bluebells reign in a neighbor’s backyard.
Jill Severn | The JOLT News
Our bluebells are scilla, a European/British/Irish import and member of the hyacinth family. Wikipedia describes it as having drooping flowers, but I’m proud to report that ours stand up straight. The state of Virginia calls another sort of flower — a native one — bluebells. That’s OK, though; we can both be right.
Fern fiddleheads have been around far longer than fiddles.
Jill Severn | The JOLT News
This week many varieties of ferns pushed up fiddleheads in the sun. Several kinds of native ferns pushed up their fiddleheads — among them the delicate maidenhair, the edible-if-cooked bracken, and our superabundant and super hardy sword ferns.
Lately, I’ve been watching the sword fern by my front steps as I sit and drink my coffee in the morning sun. For years I’ve wondered if ferns inspired the design of violins, or just the name of their scrolled end. I looked it up, but found no trustworthy answer to this question. Can anyone solve this mystery?
Sword ferns are, by the way, wonderfully adaptable and easy to transplant. They can tolerate more sun and less water than you might think. And they are amenable to being pruned back to the ground in early March, so you get an unobstructed spring show of emerging fiddleheads and their transformation.
I resisted doing this for a long time, thinking it was unnatural. But in addition to making the ferns look healthier and happier all year, it creates space beneath them for spring flowers like bluebells to bloom before that space is covered up by the growing fern fronds.
Peony buds build suspense.
Jill Severn | The JOLT News
The magic of a sunny week has affected the peonies too.
I went just a few days without looking at them, and now suddenly I see they have fully formed, tight little buds. Those buds mark the beginning of what always feels like a long, suspenseful wait for them to bloom in early June.
So maybe the best effect of this sunny week is its reminder of the glories to come: the rising forces of beauty, growth, mystery and abundance all around us.
The procession of the plant species has already begun. The Olympia Procession of the Species will catch up with it on April 25 and 26. Let’s hope for sunny weather that weekend too.
Jill Severn writes from her home in Olympia, where she grows vegetables, flowers, and a small flock of chickens. She loves conversation among gardeners. Start one by emailing her at jill@theJOLTnews.com
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